This disclosure relates generally to aggregating merchant transaction information and, more particularly, to a system and method for associating related merchants with a parent “aggregate merchant” to facilitate the aggregation of transaction data across related merchants.
A processor of financial transactions, such as payment transactions, processes transactions between many types of entities, such as personal consumers (e.g., individuals, or “cardholders”) and merchants (e.g., the businesses selling those goods and services). Some merchants, such as a retail outlet store or a restaurant, process transactions involving their consumers using a point-of-sale (“POS”) device connected to a payment network. During a typical payment card transaction, the cardholder identifies his/her payment account, such as a credit card account, by swiping their payment card through the POS device. The merchant is identified through the use of pre-configured merchant information stored within the POS device. Thus, when the POS device interacts with the payment network to perform the transaction, both the consumer data from the payment card and the merchant data from the POS device are sent through to the payment network for processing.
Payment networks receive transactions involving many types of merchants. Some businesses are conventional small-business operators, such as a single-store restaurant (i.e., a single merchant at a single location). Other businesses are franchise businesses with many franchisees, each of which may operate one or more storefronts (i.e., multiple merchants/locations). Still other businesses are corporate businesses which may operate many storefronts themselves (i.e., multiple merchants/locations). A business with multiple merchants may be thought of, and analyzed as, an aggregate merchant. It would be beneficial to be able to aggregate multiple related merchants to a single aggregate merchant.